Georges St-Pierre Announces The Formation Of A UFC Fighter Association

The big ‘industry redefining’ announcement made by Georges St-Pierre, Bjorn Rebney, and a number of other big name UFC stars has been revealed: they’re starting another organization called the Mixed Martial Arts Athlete Association, which has the goal of getting fighters a bigger piece of UFC profits. During a conference call earlier today, St-Pierre made the case for such a group, saying UFC fighters only make 8% of the money made by the UFC, while in other sports the split is much closer to 50%.

Other fighters on the call included Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, Tim Kennedy, TJ Dillashaw, and Cain Velasquez. Cerrone, known for always being ready to step up and take any fight on short notice, said the sport had a long way to go to addressing the concerns of fighters regarding job security, healthcare, and retirement. Velasquez was also concerned about the cost of treating injuries sustained working for the UFC after his career was over.

Former Bellator head Bjorn Rebney stressed that they were not going the route of a union as that could take up to five years to set up. Instead, their ‘association’ would pull in as many fighters from the UFC as they could and then look to force the company to deal with them. He went so far as to put the possibility of a fighter’s strike on the table.

According to Tim Kennedy, the MMAAA will be run by fighters and only fighters, with Rebney serving as an advisor. CAA, the talent agency representing the fighters on the call, isn’t behind the organization but is offering its clients their support to help make it happen.

Out of all the fighters on the call, St-Pierre and Kennedy were the most vocal in calling out the UFC for their unfair practices and saying something had to give so fighters started getting a fair share of profits. “I don’t have to do this, I don’t need money,” St-Pierre said. “But it’s what is right.”

Specifics weren’t laid out on the call, with the group admitting they were concerned new UFC owners WME-IMG will be trying to stop them at every opportunity from putting plans into action. But it sounds like they’re very serious about adding many more UFC fighters to their organization and making some big moves soon. We’ll keep you up to date on all of the action.

Another organization? To anyone that follows the sport it sounds like they are starting a rival mma company. Is that what you think is happening? Because that’s how the article reads when you use that word repeatedly, and that’s not the case at all. Is this the same guy that called something a “leg kick to the head?”

I was about to type the same thing as you. The use of the word organization does make it sound like they are starting a rival promotion similar to bellator WSOF Etc. What they are trying to do is amazing and will lead to protection of former fighter example Don Frye UFC hall of Famer who loses his health insurance this year and has just woke up former a medically induced coma. They better the fighters get paid, treated, respected the more “athletes” will join the sport kids will grow up in martial arts as well as or instead of football and basketball. If fighters are not treated better fighters will go back to just being “tough man” competitions because real Athletes will play other sports that pay more. Imagine an athlete like Lebron James with decades of training fighting as a heavyweight that’s what this can lead to

Zuffa knew this day was long overdue, I believe it’s the reason why they sold. Not going to mean much until the MMAAA has the majority of the fighters represented. They should get a better piece of revenue sharing across all platforms and rework the reebok deal.